


Falling Water

by water_bby



Category: Pelléas et Mélisande - Debussy/Maeterlinck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_bby/pseuds/water_bby
Summary: Golaud’s sister-in-law has come for his wife’s body.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	Falling Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raspberryhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/gifts).



Golaud held his daughter. His niece? His daughter, he told himself. She was his daughter.

He stared at the body of his wife. Why had the maids had fallen silent? And then there was a splash, not of a tear, but a fountain or waterfall. He jerked his eyes from his wife to the woman now standing by him, water dripping from her hair and her clothes.

“So it is over, now,” she said, her voice so like that of his wife. “I felt her fading, but I had hoped she would come back to us.

“‘Sister,’ I told her—well, not ‘sister,’ but it is the word closest in your tongue. ‘Sister, why do you want to try human life?’ Our stories hold no good endings for such a want, though we all feel it at some point. Usually, it is a fleeting thing, a thought then gone, though sometimes to forget it requires having a different thread to chase. I feared this would be one of the rare times that such distraction would not work. She had been talking about trying out human life for nearly seven of your years, and even the most fantastic weavings only temporarily dissuaded her.

“I never received an answer. She stared me straight in the eye and threw her crown into a pool, shedding the enchantment off herself at the same time. I think she deliberately blocked me. I know she cast enchantments on the crown so none of our kind could touch it. I tried. Even as she looked through me to the trees behind, I thrust my arm into the pool and could not grasp the crown.

“We stayed like that for days. And then you came.

“I watched you bring her here, to your place of earth and stone. I watched as she settled for this place, so unlike our home of waters. I still do not understand, human, what she saw in your and your brother that she stayed here. That she bore you a child. But I do not need to understand you, and you will not understand me. As you did not understand my sister.

“I shall take my sister now. She may have left us, but we have not left her.

“When you are done with the child, leave her in the river. We will retrieve her for her mother’s sake.”

There was no one there, nothing but a puddle on the floor, a wet spot in the middle of the bed, and the faint tang of falling water in the air. Golaud held his daughter more closely. He would never be done with her, he swore, tears running down his face.


End file.
